Someone clutched Deriugin’s arm again. The chief mechanic, whose face was disfigured with horror, pointed to the East and shouted hoarsely:

“The wind, the wind, Santa Madonna!!”

Indeed, from the northwest the wind bore clouds of sand, heaps of ashes, dry grass and twirled them into pillars of whirlwinds from right and left. The fiery sphere shuddered under the blows, rocked and sighed: then, making two attempts to free itself, it suddenly gave an enormous leap toward the southern end of the enclosed circle. On the platforms of the tractors little fires — began to jump restlessly, signalizing the new formation. But it was too late. Cut up by the hurricane, the atomic vortex within a few seconds flew past the distance between the line of magnets and, enveloping in a flaming shroud the nearest of them, took itself off into the booming and rumbling darkness.

For several minutes the tractors tossed about confusedly like a herd of awkward turtles. Then, they stretched out in three lines and thundering and clanking with the metals, they took up the chase. Meanwhile, the darkness continued to spread, blanketing more than half of the sky The wild chase continued for fifteen minutes. The fiery trail of the whirl disappeared completely in the blinding darkness which now had enveloped the full horizon. A torrent of rain poured clown, mixed with dirt and ashes. To continue, was both absurd and impossible. Deriugin sat apathetically in his place, his arms crossed on his chest and his eyes shut, completely crushed by the enraged elements. Indolently his thoughts roved in his head, stopping at nothing. Thus passed half an hour.

Then it appeared as if the Earth had heaved a heavy sigh from its depths and quaked all the way down to its bottomless abyss. A shuddering, incredible roar devoured everything else and was precipitated in rumblings of sounds upon the trembling darkness. A giant fiery pillar grew up in measureless height, as if the Earth’s womb had belched out its contents into heaven. A hot wave of heat smote Deriugin and he lost his. conscience.

When he recovered, he found himself in one of Rome’s hospitals amid tens of thousands of wounded, maimed and half-crazed people who had escaped death during the unusual catastrophe which had befallen their unfortunate country.

He could not conceive for a long time what had happened. The events resembled too much the nightmares of a sick brain. But here’s what happened: The earthquake in Campagna ended with such a colossal eruption, that it could be compared only with the catastrophe on the Krakatao Island in the Strait of Sunda, in 1883. Three consecutive subterranean shocks discharged from the crater of Vesuvius incredible amounts of glowing lava, pumice and ashes.